Fat Tony

I think we are likely to end up with picks #1 and #3 and we should use our picks to draft kids.

Experience has advantages but is no panacea. It also tends to cost more. We should canvass the job widely and find the smartest candidate. Only interviewing two candidates last time was a huge mistake. Our key problem has been our recruiting. If we get that right our other problems will gradually disappear. This is where we should be allocating much more of our resources. Overpaying for a coach like Paul Roos comes at the expense of a reduced budget for recruiting. We are running at a loss and are on like support from the AFL, so we can’t afford both. I would prefer Leigh Tudor as coach with good recruits walking into the club than Roos and more of the same crud players that we have drafted in recent years.

I follow Port Melbourne reasonably closely and know one of the players down there pretty well. Ayres has had almost ten years at AFL level with good sides and without success. In short, I think we can do much better. Ayres well respected by the players but isn’t overly approachable or positive to the players or all that bright. Coaching at AFL level is vastly different than in the VFL, as the level of planning required for an AFL game is much intense and the coach spends much more time with the players each week. I also don’t believe he is all that strong in analysing and making good decisions about lists, which is very important at AFL level but not at all important as coach of Port Melbourne, as the best VFL standard players want to play for them and there is no draft or trading.

Inexperience is not why Neeld's failed. He is just a bad decision maker who is coach of a terrible list. And experience is not that important these days. Only two of the last eleven premiership coaches had senior experience before getting the top job. Better to have someone young and smart than past it. Longmire Scott Malthouse Clarkson Thompson Worsfold Roos Williams Matthews Sheedy Pagan

Daniher -> prelim in 1998 Neeld -> 3 wins against kids and 1 win vs 6.16 bombers

I judge Neeld on what the MFC produces, not Casey, and I doubt we would have gone through the centre corridor more than 50 times in his 28 games as coach. And just because a game plan works in the VFL doesn't mean it will work in the AFL.

Obviously there needs to be a balance between defence and attack, but IMO Neeld has skewed our balance too far in favour of defence. We lack purpose with the ball in hand and our long-kicking-down-the-line game is ineffective when the opposition has time to set their defensive structures and it provides no overlap. Our players are also too concerned with their opponents at stoppages, which usually means they are second to the ball and/or that our clearances are not clean. We are also too predictable in always hitting to Nathan Jones. Neeld’s approach would be fine if our midfield was of equal talent to the opposition, but it isn’t and so we are always on the back foot. We need to be more unorthodox in our tactics to compete. This all means our forward line doesn’t have a chance as a result of our slow ball movement. Geelong plays a great brand of football and should be the club we look to emulate. And I prefer to base my analysis on what I see on the field rather than a ‘vision’ (or delusion).

I want Neeld sacked because he has made so many bad decisions in such a short time. Principally, my key issue with Neeld is that his overall philosophy of football is far too defensive and too ridged. This is reflected by his game plan which does not suit our list. We have a team of inferior talent, and therefore we should be encouraged more to roll the dice/take risks. Neeld’s current ‘risk free’ approach is anything but and is highly predictable and flawed (as demonstrated by the results). I also think it is nonsensical for a coach to be fixed on a game style given how quickly the game evolves, especially given how far away we are from a position to win a flag. Who knows, AFL could be a 16 a side game by that stage. A flexible approach is the only way to go. I also highly suspect Neeld has disenfranchised a number of key players. The decision to demote and denigrate the previous leadership group and openly criticise players in the media before even meeting them was divisive and hasn’t paid off. We are playing with little confidence at the moment and IMO this likely stems from Neeld’s initial foray into the club and his ‘robotic’ game plan. With the list, I have issues with the decisions give Jamar and McKenzie three-year contracts, letting Moloney and Martin go, recruiting Dawes (given the price, both draft picks and salary, and given the number of other key forwards on our list), Byrnes (given the price, two year contract and his age), as well as Rodan, Pederson and Gilles, who are too old/not up to it. The retentions of Troy Davis and Tom Couch were also errors in my view. (While Couch may be seen as unimportant given he is a rookie, it meant that we were forced to take mature agers Terlich and Matt Jones in the National Draft. Effectively Couch’s retention cost us pick 53.) While I could understand one or two errors in terms of list management, 10 is just too many IMO. His bad decisions extend to team selection/game day positioning. This is highlighted by his use of Rivers, Garland, Moloney and Magner as forwards for much of last year. Jack Watts is clearly not a small defender and should be showing more than he is currently. I am under no illusion that MFC’s current position is largely due to the lack of talent on our list. However, the coach needs to be measured on his ability to get the most out of the team and IMO he has badly failed to date on this score. The reasons for moving early are to give a caretaker a chance to prove his worth and to help in player retention for next year. Waiting to sack him later in the year is just delaying the inevitable and we would be better off letting our players play a more instinctual game. Einstein summed up MFC’s current position when he said ‘Insanity is doing the same things again and again expecting different results’.

Clarkson is clearly a good coach. However, I would argue that there are many good coaches out there and that Pelchen (and by extension Buddy) was the key behind him becoming a great coach.

It is easy to point out failures given there are 18 clubs and only one winner each year. Roos, Matthews and Pagan are examples who starting as caretakers and later succeeded, and all were at clubs that had experienced long premiership droughts like us.

The two years after Wallace took over the Bulldogs they made successive prelims. The point was that both he and Roos showed enough in a caretaker role to be given the job the following year. This is the rationale for moving now and giving someone else an audition for the role.

A five-year, big money deal would be ridiculous for any coach. We would be better off spending the money on getting our recruiting decisions right. It wouldn’t have mattered if Leigh Matthews was coaching us in recent years such was the quality of our playing list. Dennis Pagan was a great coach because he had Carey, Archer McKernan, Stevens and Clarkson had because he had Buddy, Mitchell, Hodge and Roughead etc. Both proved successful coaches because of their players and both were lucky to be given the chance.

Neeld will become a poster boy of what not to do when you are appointed as an AFL senior coach. Instead of trying to encourage the young Demons group from the beginning, he was all ‘stick’– criticising the players in the media, belittling the former leadership group and denigrating the way they used to play and train. Moreover, Neeld introduced an ultra-defensive and complicated game plan. Clearly this was always going to take time to learn, but it should have been brought in gradually rather than trying to completely reinvent the wheel after Bailey. (As an aside, I believe having such a dogmatic view as to how best play the game is absurd given the way in which modern AFL football changes so quickly. And our game plan has looked obsolete from the get go.) The loss of confidence we are seeing on the ground today still stems from the impact of Neeld’s initial days, particularly the first game loss against Brisbane. A few of us saw this problem early on but we were hosed down by the Demonland mob. I think it best to cut Neeld immediately. We need to give hope to our best young talent coming out of contract in the next two years and it would give one of our young assistants the chance to prove their worth. Ideally we would find the next Paul Roos or Terry Wallace. As for whom takes over as senior coach thereafter, we should cast a wider net this time and not just pick an assistant from one of the top clubs. Coaching a poor club like Melbourne requires greater levels of innovation than coaching one of the top clubs, as the MFC needs to be much smarter about our use of resources. Experience as a senior coach would be preferred, but we shouldn’t discount anyone, particularly a smart, hard working assistant with an ordinary playing record from a poor club. On the surface, my preferred option would be Mark Williams. Moreover, we shouldn’t overpay the coach. We would be better off spending more money boosting the recruiting department.

Hopefully WADA views cream differently than injections. Although who knows what has been going on at MFC.

I don't think 'the phamacy' is your local Amcal chemist.

Let's see how this Danks thing plays out before we hand out the adulations.

Our players are clearly instructed to kick instead of handball when the ball pressure is low, particularly in the back half. Whilst the game plan works on occasion, as the clips showed, these examples are the exception rather than the rule. IMO good team defence will continue to see us kick down the line too often if we preserve with this strategy and the plan also requires a level of foot skills that most AFL players just don’t have. As much as Neeld might view a more central, run and handball game style as Russian Roulette, at least you can win under that approach a reasonable percentage of the time. The current game plan means the opposition has the advantage when we have the ball in the back half and it looks like we are just holding the ball to waste time rather than with the purpose to score.

Is he old enough to grow a beard yet?

No. It was nothing to do with leadership. I just made the point that the focus of our recruiting has been on KPFs more so than the the midfield. Whilst we have drafted a lot of mids with low/rookie picks, most of our high picks have been spent on gorilla forwards.

We traded picks #4, #12 and #20+ for KPF in the last two years.

Don't let the spin fool you. After 18 months under Neeld the scoreboard shows 44 to 271 in second halves against two bottom eight sides and one finalist from the year before. And for the record, we won 8.5 AFL games with the base level fitness.

So when does it cease to be all Bailey's fault?

A lot has been written about our fitness/training having improved since Neeld took over. Here are some of the facts: Neeld and Misson have been with the club for two pre-seasons. 45% of our list has been turned over since Bailey departed. We have been outscored 44 to 271 in second halves this year.

After topping up with readymade recruits in the off season, our average losing margin this year is 107 points. Add to that, some of our most talented players appear want out of the club at a time when the competition has embraced free agency. Neeld has been a huge mistake whichever way you look at it. Every minute he is there is hurting the club.

Why didn't the club hire a helicopter?